


Experience, the Daughter of Fools

by Syberina5



Series: Experience, the Daughter of Fools [1]
Category: Veronica Mars (Movie 2014), Veronica Mars (TV), Veronica Mars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gen, discussion of archive warning topics (rape death underage sex etc.)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-26
Updated: 2017-09-22
Packaged: 2018-01-20 20:19:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 30
Words: 11,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1524245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syberina5/pseuds/Syberina5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lessons Veronica has learned over her many years of experience, in no particular order. Lessons added 9/22/2017<br/>I forgot how much I loved this series. I think I've re-read half of it by getting sucked in repeatedly while trying to pick Lesson #s.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Foreword

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I’ve had a lot of therapy.  
> Author’s Notes: The title is from a poem I wrote years ago and, while this is currently marked complete, do not be surprised if new lessons pop up. Sorry, the chapter lengths are all cattywampus; it’s a thing. It has been mentioned that reading it in "Entire Work" mode removes some of that.

I've learned a lot in my life. Spending all but a handful of years as a student doesn't hurt. Between my afterschool surveillance and two degrees I feel like there's not much left for me to discover.


	2. Lesson #999: addiction comes in many forms.

Hello, my name is Veronica and I am an addict.

The things I am addicted to could fill an encyclopedia. Sarcasm. Snark. Pizza. Eavesdropping. Tazers, cracking wise, and frosting. Food that comes in a box. Fuzzy slippers. Adrenaline. Logan Echolls. My smartphone. AngryBirds. Vengeance. A Song of Ice and Fire (Arya will kill you all). Trouble. Being right. Spaghettios. 

And that is just the top of the list. 

All of these things have cost me and I like to think that, for most of them, I have hit bottom, I have admitted that I have a problem and am actively recovering.

My secret?

Cold turkey.

Ok, occasionally I fall off the wagon and eat an entire pizza by myself on a Friday night. I get back on the wagon though. I get back on it every time.

My success has been varied (let’s face it, going cold turkey on sarcasm is destined for failure) but I have by far amassed the biggest, shiniest chip in recovering from my obsession with one Logan Echolls.

(Which is hilarious because he used to accuse me of being obsessed with Duncan and going cold turkey there was practically federally enforced and almost a non-issue).

I’d like to think it was just how rocky that rock bottom was, just how many opportunities for assault charges to be filed there were but that wasn’t it.

I think it was actually the worst sex we’d ever had that made it so easy to walk away. To not look back.

Things had been uncharacteristically quiet after I busted The Castle’s membership wide open (well, ok, not for them) that the letter from Stanford saying I was eligible for a game changing scholarship was taken pretty seriously, especially once Dad found out about it.

Getting out of Neptune, away from the ghosts that dogged my daily existence, and starting again in a place where no one had ever called me a slut or accused me of kidnapping or raped me or attempted to kill me sounded like heaven.

Starting fresh meant starting _fresh_. I was not even considering a long distance relationship. I was no Meryl; I just didn’t have it in me to trust in love. Nope. No way. No how. 

She’d said when you were in love you just _knew_. And I didn’t. I had been in love. _In love_ in love and I knew no such thing. I hadn’t _known_ about Duncan’s epilepsy, or the possible incest. And with Logan I had _known_ he loved me but I didn’t _know_ how to trust him, how to believe him, how to not be disappointed and angry when he did something characteristically dangerous. Love brought no new knowledge for me, and I didn’t see how that could be any different with Piz.

Needless to say he didn’t take that well. The least well I had ever seen him take anything. There was screaming, there was crying, there was slamming of doors. Somewhere in there, there was also breaking up.

One drunken pity party later there was also the worst, least satisfying round of angry sex Logan and I had ever had. Probably mostly because I couldn’t look at him. He’d likely thought that it was the start of relationship-bout #32, his smugness and relief on his face, and I was just ripping off the Band-Aid. Or saying goodbye. Or self-destructing. Or just burning the bridge, making sure that I couldn’t come back (a token page out of the Echolls playbook).

I’d wanted to puke as I pulled out of his arms—both of us still panting, sweat still hot and slick on our skin—righting my clothes, and leaving without a farewell kiss.

And I’d never gone back. There were no all-night drives to park at the Grand and stare at his (and Duncan’s and Dick’s) balcony. No checking his credit card statements or cell records. I didn’t even call Tina at the front desk to see if he was still staying there.

Sure, I ached— _God_ , did I _ache_ —but I was aching for Back-Up and Piz and Wallace and Dad and Mac and, God, Logan and Lilly and even my car and my carpets so he just kind of got lost in the shuffle and misery which came up hard against the 18 credits I was taking to make the most out of my scholarship and graduate early.

Detox is always the hardest part.


	3. Lesson #1: warm is good.

And cold? Cold is bad.


	4. Lesson #2: lights are bright.

Lights are bright and shutting your eyes only fixes that a little. Even when you’re yelling about it.


	5. Lesson #3: food please.

No, really, food now.


	6. Lesson #4: farting feels funny.

Especially when there is already squishy stuff on your butt.


	7. Lesson #5: things change faster when you scream (also see #31: the squeaky wheel gets the oil).

They may not always change to be what you want but they still change and, keep at it long enough and loud enough, eventually it will go the way you want.


	8. Lesson #9: Daddy loves you.

You’re pretty adamant about being warm but there is something about this particular warmth, these particular nuzzles, that particular laugh that always feels warmer.

Lots of them feel different but these? These are the best. And you want them forever.


	9. Lesson #1,362: alcoholism is a disease.

A psych major spends a substantial amount of time with addiction in an academic sense. I heard over and over that addicts do not recover for a significant period of time until they want to get clean for _themselves_ (accompanied by the ever popular, they’ve got to hit rock bottom first).

Not for husbands, not for babies, and certainly not for forceful daughters who hunt them down and decide to blow their life savings as though money is the only obstacle to being well. 

Even hitting bottom may not be enough to turn an addict around.

There’s a big difference between knowing it and _knowing_ it and that right there is the genesis of billions spent in therapy and rehab around the world.

A professor of mine said I showed a distinct lack of empathy. He wasn’t wrong. He said I’d never make a good clinician until I learned to see the person and let go of the judgment.

(The Al-Anon and AA meetings he sent me to didn’t really help with that. 

Neither did law school.)


	10. Lesson #46: people suck.

As an Earthling you learn this lesson almost constantly. Every time you think you have accepted it someone does something heroic or selfless and you think, for just a fraction of a second, that people are basically good and humanity in general will figure its shit out sooner or later.

Sooner, rather than later, you regret that thought because people suck. 

The parent who is tough on the kids all in the name of doing what is best for them turns out to be fondling them in the bathtub.

That’s what you get for giving someone the benefit of the doubt, for believing for even a second that people are not messed up little assholes.


	11. Lesson #749: one cannot always be right.

Deep breath.

I’m wrong sometimes.

I hate it, but I am. I’m not fucking Jessica Fletcher? I don’t know all the penny-ante shit constantly. Sometimes I am wrong. 

Sometimes I am wrong and bad stuff happens.


	12. Lesson #31: the squeaky wheel gets the oil.

It does not, however, get a pony.

Unless you count the stuffed, taller than me, stands on its own (but not if you climb on its back) version Mom put a bow on and hid in my closet.

I don’t.


	13. Lesson #3,284: being wrong can be nice.

We never talked about it. Well, we hadn’t talked about it since college (a horrifying conversation that essentially amounted to both of us tending to the nuclear winter option). Sure, there was a brief gasp of the word condom that night at Dad’s and after we were in each other’s pockets when he was stateside so things like pills and test results weren’t exactly secret or even tucked in drawers.

So, what I’m saying is, we never really talked about it.

And then suddenly I’m having flashbacks to the doctor telling me I have chlamydia. Only this time the sexually transmitted disease could eventually be a person.

I really thought I’d developed hypothyroidism or something but… nope. Just a case of baby.

Apparently when your sex life is a little inconsistent (four weeks of several times a day to six months of nada) your pill taking tendencies can get a little inconsistent too. Without you even noticing.

I spent a while deftly hyperventilating under the cover of being chill.

I was pretty sure what Logan’s reaction was going to be. I was pretty sure what my reaction was. It was supposed to be the same as both of our well-thought decisions were when we were 18 and so royally messed up we would could barely function as a couple for more than six weeks.

And I was fine with that. 

I would tell him and we’d make an appointment and I’d be under the weather for a while and everything would be fine. 

But I kept picturing Duncan and Meg’s little girl. Who would she be now? I kept feeling the weight of her in my arms as if I had said goodbye to her hours ago instead of more than a decade. What would a shape like that feel like if it were truly mine, mine to keep, not just mine to keep safe? What would a shape like that look like if it were half Logan? What would a shape like that grow to be like if it were ours? Ours to mess up as royally as we were messed up?

I think I had been sitting in my car outside the doctor’s office for nearly eight hours by the time Logan slid in next to me, worried and too quiet (it’s not creepy to access your loved ones’ smartphone GPS when they have a dangerous job and are not responding to contact attempts—“Fucking answer your goddamned phone, Veronica, or I’m calling your father!”).

I just looked at him for a really long time. 

Eventually he took the keys out of my hand and pulled me over the stick shift and into his lap, my feet dangling into the wheel well like a kid on the counter.

“Your dad’s okay. I’m okay,” he said. “Wallace, Mac, Dick. Even Weeves was fine when I called him looking for you a couple of hours ago. But you, you, Veronica Mars, are not okay.” He kissed my temple and smelled my hair. “I wish you’d talk to me.”

This was a lesson I had already learned: you can’t always run. I _could_ climb out of his lap and out of the car and bury my head in my dad’s spare room for a week until I had dealt with this—that 18 year-old sure would have—and Logan would have accepted it. Been hurt and asked me to explain, but accepted and tried not to hold on to it ( _God_ , it’s almost like we’re _adults_ ). But that wasn’t the relationship I wanted anymore, it wasn’t the standard I could live with and, really, I could stare down Fitzpatricks with guns so I could muster up the guts to sit there and try to process with Logan rather than keep him at arm’s length until the spinning stopped.

So I moved his hand that was holding mine to my stomach and looked at him out of the corner of my eye. 

He was a smart boy, always had been. It didn’t take him all that long to get it.

I pulled my hand out from under his and watched him more closely. I felt his fingers flex against my belly and his eyes crinkle up and down as he tried to decide which reaction to show me. He turned his nose into my neck for a moment then let his head fall back against the seat, a laugh escaping (short, half rueful, half mischievous).

“Well,” he said, other hand carding through my hair, “it would never be dull.”

“Are you saying we’re dull now?”

He laughed again and kissed me on the lips. I turned into it and we sat there for a while.

“Would we be like them?” It took forever to come out of my mouth.

“No.” The sureness in his tone wasn’t code for Echolls bravado or some sort of front. It was as real as his voice when he told me he loved me, only without the pain, without the years of history and details.

The confusion must have been in my eyes.

“Do you have any idea how much therapy is in this car?” I did, actually. “We couldn’t be them if we tried. We would mess up in all new, us ways but we would never be them.”

I guess I smiled a little too. But then, “The hero is the one that stays.”

“You’ve always been heroic, Veronica,” he brushed hair off my neck, “and I’ve never been any good at leaving you alone so…”

“‘All new, us ways…’”

He shrugged, “Could be epic.”

I looked into the calm and the sureness and the love in his eyes and I remembered a long ago feeling of warmth, a special, like no other kind of warmth and I thought, _He’d be a really good dad._

I smiled and I kissed him. He was going to be a really good dad.


	14. Lesson #2,531: heels are good for making out.

The height difference is different now. I remember straining up on tiptoes as he leaned down just to kiss him goodbye and it’s not the ache and pull that I remember. I catch myself missing it sometimes like when we part ways at an airport or a ship yard and I think there should be just a twinge more of physical pain to keep the ache in my chest in check.

On the plus side, it means he kisses my lips more than my forehead. A welcome change.


	15. Lesson #2,858: when you assume, you make an ass of u and me.

It wasn't one of those things where you talk about your feelings for hours and make your peace with the past. It wasn't intentionally one of those things where you ignore the past and just hope it doesn't come back to bite you (it always does). 

Did I maybe expect sex to be the magic bullet (why? It never had been before, try as we did)? Briefly, maybe, but for a totally different problem. Yes, using him for the oblivion of the not-misery he can provide in the face of my father dying was a lesson I thought I had learned at 18 (guess not). 

I think, ultimately, we both just assumed that the word "bygones," genuinely meant, was enough to sweep all that had come before way and let us... be, for lack of a better idea.

Which was stupid of us. Really, us? Us give up our baggage without angst and hurting and remorse and a couple of dramatic break-ups? Ha. That's funny.

So I shouldn't have been surprised when, one day after some fight-nullifying angry sex, I made a joke about how it was far from our worst performance of the kind—mostly as a nod to just how fight-nullifying it had been—and Logan went quiet, still. A little too quiet, a little too still Like he was bracing himself for the jerk that would put his arm back in its socket.

Suddenly we were both remembering different sides of the same night, the same morning after, the same weeks that followed of ache and denial.

I still didn't know just what that had been for him but I had built up his end of the story nine years before and was fairly sure that it had shaken out that way.

He rolled away from me, tucking his hands under his cheek, under his pillow and said, in the voice I remember too well from too many heartbreaks, "I was so pissed at you."

The unexpected anger had me turning towards him, the sound of the sheet had him continuing.

"I knew what was going on that night, Veronica. I knew you'd had some fight with Piz and I was just there, just a body to you." I spoke to interrupt him but he continued. "You wouldn't even look at me," he said over his shoulder, "wouldn't say anything. I knew that you and Piz would make up and I would just be that thing you'd done one night and it would be harder than ever for us to be okay again."

"So why did you let me," I asked, still afraid to touch him, wanting to.

This time he turned, rolling over onto his back, a hand waving up and flopping on his still sweaty chest in a shoulderless shrug. "I love you, Veronica."

I winced in ways I hoped he hadn't seen. We had been such a mess, so willing to hurt and be hurt for each other. Then we were a knot of codependence and sincere affection twisted by all the people who had come before, by each other.

"Didn't that ever go away?" I forced myself to look into his eyes, return his vulnerability with my own (I did learn some things about being a good therapist).

He smirked at me, "V, you could have shown up at any point and asked me to get arrested, beat somebody up, steal evidence, pay off a blackmailer... I would have done it."

"Wow. I wish I'd known that." And I was kidding. In all the years I was gone I hadn't needed any of those things. If I had, I would have called Logan.

"You only ever asked for the big things, Veronica, like they were nothing." He laughed, "Devil of a time to get you to accept the easy things though."

"I still don't understand why you guys ever listened to me. Its not like I gave you all that many big things back."

"That's not true. You loved us. You took care of us. Most of the time you kind of trusted us."

"God, I am so sorry, Logan." Looking back, it felt like I had been terribly uncompromising and even a bit of a user, cajoling my best loved comrades into danger and intrigue.

"I'm not."

I laid there, with my forehead against his arm, waiting for something to come out of my mouth. "I couldn't come back. I thought," I laughed. "I thought staying away made me braver and stronger. I couldn't come back because if I did it would all just happen over again. I'd be miserable; you'd be miserable. There'd always be one more case and I'd always do anything to solve it and sooner rather than later none of you would be speaking to me anymore. Even Wallace has his limits. Even my dad. The Castle case..." I heaved a heavy sigh, "I was right back where I started and looking at my old files on Jake Kane. There was no good reason, Logan. It wasn't Lilly or Duncan or....” I wrapped a hand around his arm. “And I had cost my father the election. I didn't want to be that girl anymore and I guess leaving was the only way to stop."

His fingers brushed the hair away from my face, slid into the strands. "And now?"

"If I don't clean up this fucking town we're all going to die." And I was serious. He knew it.

Neptune had been a time bomb on the ocean for more than a decade. The wires were corroded from the salt in the air and the nitroglycerine was getting less stable with age, the casing starting to crack.

"Hmm, Vote Veronica."

"Nobody here would elect me dog-catcher."

"I think you'd be surprised."

"Please, if any Mars deserves to be sheriff it is not me."

"Mars for Mayor?" He fiddled with my earlobe. "Just think what you could do with you and your dad in office"

"Celeste Kane would die first."

"Hey, look! You just found your first reason to run. And, if you promised to give him a free parking sticker or a handicap permit, Dick would bank roll the whole thing."

"Dick?" I snorted, it was a laugh riot waiting to happen.

"I'm serious."

"Oh, okay," I wasn't.

"His dad kicked it, Veronica. He left everything to Dick." The look on my face had him pressing on. "There wasn't anybody else."

"No half-siblings? No Mini-Kendall? Other hypenates?"

He just shook his head.

"Oh, God," I gasped, "the world is ending." He raised an eyebrow. "I feel bad for Dick."

He smirked and kissed me. I felt in my gut that I still needed to say something but I didn't know what it was so I laid there, increasingly snuggled into Logan as though that were the key or he might absorb whatever it was through osmosis. 

"I loved you too, you know," tripped out of my mouth painstakingly later—I thought too late, that he was asleep.

"Hmmm? Yeah, when?"

"Then. Before. Now."

"Didn't that ever go away?"

I huffed a laugh softly and smirked into a rib. "I flew cross country for a couple of days to spend all my time with lawyers because of one phone call nine years after I used you for sex and walked out. What do you think?"

He smiled, opened his eyes into mine. "I love you too, Veronica Mars."


	16. Lesson #1,037: gestalt, or the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

Cassidy’s life was more than the sum of its parts.

My mother’s life was more than the sum of its parts.

My life was more than my dead and deserting loved ones.

My life was more than solving mysteries or being a smarty pants.

I used to forget that. I forgot it because there was Lilly and Duncan and Logan and Lianne and Wallace and Dad and Meg and Weevil and even Mr. Clemmons with their expectations and their deaths and their trauma.

I would forget and whatever balance I had was gone and I felt like the sum of my experiences but not the woman I knew I was.


	17. Lesson #2,507: there are more languages than men can speak.

Knowledge is power. There are times I know too much (what it feels like when the inside of a freezer hits the boiling point). There are times I know nothing (Duncan, Mom, Lilly, Cassidy). 

But on the nights where my father had nearly died I am filled with pockets of both and lost in the momentary burst of too much or not enough. What of your skin you can actually feel is painful in those moments.

I was casting about for something to tether to. The feel and safety of giving over just enough to let Logan carry my mostly asleep self into the house, take my shoes off, and slip out to the couch was the bliss of ignorance. I was just lucid enough to know what he was doing and that it felt good.

It ebbed suddenly, that feeling, when the guestroom door clicked and I was alone again with the knowledge that my father—leviathan of love and support—was actually mortal. Nausea rolled over me and the discomfort of sleeping in skinny jeans had me up, stripping them off, and pulling on a t-shirt while I listened to the sound of Logan moving in the house.

I was on my way to brush my teeth and take off the top layer of my mascara (only the upper most layers really come all the way off; accepting and even taking advantage of that can mean an extra 30 minutes of sleep) when I heard the bolt tumble and panic filled me. I was asking him to wait before the thought actually crossed my mind and wrapping my hands around his face before I’d thought better of it.

He held back, pulled back, for a second and I could tell he wanted to be sure, be sure I meant it, that I wasn’t just reacting to a Mars-near-death-experience (these things had happened before). Just when I thought, _Yes. Yes, brains are shorting out_ he’d pull back, he’d wait, he’d look at me like I didn’t really know what I was doing, like any millisecond it would hit me and I’d be flattened by the memory, crying, and the thought of my father in a body bag would come roaring back and leave him feeling like a heel (again). 

It was in a drawn out, agonizing moment that my brain finally caught up with his. He didn’t know. He didn’t know and he was waiting for Piz to occur to me.

And I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t say that Piz was over, gone, that he’d actually left me, because it just made the night worse somehow and the words wouldn’t come. So I ripped his shirt open—awkward, buttons pinging against the floor, my bicep, a knee where it clung to Logan’s hip—and begged him in the silence of our heavy breathing to understand, to keep pressing me against the wall, to keep making out with me like we were 16 and we only had an hour before curfew.

He did. He fought it, considered the repercussions of doing this with me but he did it. He did and I was so grateful that he still spoke enough Veronica that I could have cried. I think I may have.

All-in-all his translation needed some work and when it was over _(Harder, Logan. Faster. More._ ) I could feel him already starting to put facts between us.

“It’s okay, Veronica,” he said. “This was just comfort. Piz will understand.”

I almost laughed. Instead I rolled my forehead into some nearby patch of him, felt our sweat mixing, binding the skin. “That would just be adding insult to injury.” I wrapped my hand around his. “Just hold on for a bit, okay?”

He brushed clinging, wet hair from my face and just laid there for a while, hand in mine. Long enough for me to lose track of my mind and find it again amongst the sound of crumpling metal, explosions, and fire. 

Needing a little more time, just a bit more peace, to put some of my own pieces back together, I woke Logan up in the only way I could be sure he wouldn’t ask questions, wouldn’t give me opportunities to stop myself, to stop him. 

He fell asleep with me still on top of him, kissing him, murmuring, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” until he was out.

It wasn’t until he was bored in West Hollywood waiting for Luke to put it back his pants that he put it together. “Why didn’t you want me to call Piz last night, Veronica?” He always did use my name like punctuation.

“He wouldn’t have understood.” I was bored too; Gia and Cobb cleaning up, putting their clothes silently back on was pretty dull stuff.

“Why I was there…?”

“No, that he wasn’t required to unbreak-up with me because my father was in the ICU.”

“Jesus, Veronica.”

“What?” He sighed at the other end of the cell tower and I flashed back to the last six months of our youthful relationship. “Seriously, Echolls, what?”

“You are kind of crap with the information sharage, Mars.”

“Well, until you put your dick in me, it really wasn’t any of your business.” He made the kind of nasally disgusted sound that usually meant he was actually hiding a laugh as well as the desire to strangle me. “Logan, you asked for my help. You didn’t ask me out, you didn’t ask me if I was seeing anyone, and you didn’t do any gossip research even though Dick, Wallace, and Mac were all at your disposal, to say nothing of my father.”

“Yeah, well, pardon me for thinking we were adult enough for you to tell me on your own.”

“We are. We are also adult enough for me not to spit out, like some libidinous teenager, ‘I’m dating Piz,’ when you showed up all spiffy at the airport.”

“Libidinous?”

“Hey, I studied for the SATs, mister.” He waited. “And the LSATs. And the Bar.”

“What about the PI exam?”

“There were no words like libidinous on that exam. Fraternization and entrapment however…”

“Still SAT words. 

“Yeah, okay.” 

“So, Mars, seeing anybody special?”

“Well, kind of. I mean Gia Goodman’s always been _special_.”

His laugh was warm and quiet and it wasn’t quite his hand running over my hair or his lips on my shoulder but I’d take it. I’d take it with both hands, even if it hadn’t been rare in the last decade. 

I still wasn’t quite sure how I felt about that.


	18. Lesson #572: osmosis works.

My father can take pain away through osmosis. A kiss, a hug, a hand on my shoulder and suddenly some of it has gone from me into him.

I cannot seem to make it work on others. I want so badly to take some of Lilly's away.


	19. Lesson #816: it’s not always bad when someone calls you on your shit.

“Oh my God, JD, stop with the plotting murder while I am trying to sleep or I will strangle you with Heather’s scrunchie.” Rather than just the snort and Christian Slater impression I was hoping would lead to more sleep conducive snuggling he bit my shoulder and dug his nose into the back of my neck where he knew it would make me squeal.

“How long have you been saving that one up, hmm?” He ran his hand down the flesh on my sides, the warning and intent clear and, as I was more interested in hanging on to the edge of a nap I’d been dangling on—college was exhausting—than peeing myself in a tickle war, I rolled over and smushed my nose into his neck, right below the knot of his ear and jaw which generally had the desired affect of making him soft and cuddly—there were other places for sharp, fast, sexy, and even angry and silent.

“Tuesday. Mac insisted we watch it. Parker had never seen it—clearly a crime against humanity the UN has neglected.”

“Should I be worried that you think of me as a psychotic killer who is down with lighting a cigarette off his girlfriend’s burning flesh?”

“No,” I pouted, “you should be honored that I think of you as Christian Slater level hotness. And as sardonic and witty and—”

“Willing to blow up a school because my girlfriend dumped me?”

Shit, this joke was getting away from me. “Nope. I was the one who contemplated blowing up a high school because it was full of jerks.”

“I was the jerks. So which Heather does that make me?”

The heavy nap feeling was long gone so I sat up and looked Logan in the eyes, “You weren’t any of them. The Caitlins and the Madisons and the Dicks. It was just a joke about how you kind of move like him and were way more articulate than the usual high schooler and charming enough that even if you had helped me accidentally kill Madison Sinclair--which, I would like to point out for the record, I am too smart to not notice and would probably be the one to plan it in the first place—even then I would still look at you moony-eyed and make-out with you.”

“Hmm, so do you want to go get a slushie or play strip croquet?”

“Oh, tough call,” I said as Logan laughed and rolled us over. “Strip croquet with slushies?”

Later we were naked when he licked inside me and mumbled, “Mm, slushie.” I was practically asleep again against him when he said, “‘Our love is God,’” into my hair.


	20. Lesson #2,771:  you can fool all of the people all of the time but not the government.

My patience with the military lasted for precisely one deployment. It was during those first “180 days” (which ended up being closer to 200) that I realized I had even less claim on Logan in the eyes of the military than his “cousin” Richard Casablancas Jr. Having to go to Dick in the event something happened was a hard pill to swallow and every time I tried I coughed that sucker right back up.

I began plotting ways I could be first on Logan’s next of kin list but it was all academic until he got home and I could convince him that I was a great deal more responsible than Dick--loyalty between those two could be a tough nut to crack, not gonna lie.

But he returned to me with his hair shorter and his muscles bigger and skin against mine for a solid 36 hours. All the little complaints and arguments I had saved up seemed petty and unworthy with him back beside me and I would have rather fought with him over who got to drive his car than his trust in Dick, the man child.

We ended up talking about it once the rush of reunion subsided and I could look at him and not feel the bottom of my stomach drop out. I had no intention of not being on the list of people notified that he was dead, lost, missing, or even just delayed returning home.

He didn’t resist it so much as say that it took a while to change things like that, the military being what it is, and if I really wanted to be listed as a cousin we should get on the paperwork.

It was downloaded and in the process of being filled out when the ship-out date for his next deployment was moved up.

“It’s okay, Veronica. Dick wouldn’t lie to you. Blackmail you into bringing him a beer, yes, mock you, of course. Not tell you, no. He values his life. Beside, probably best not to be listed as a cousin now and later as something else. It’s the military so there’s not a lot of judgement but still…”

Our first Skype-date picked up where that, far from last, conversation ended. “What else?”

He sighed, “Veronica, can we talk about this when I get back? We could lose this connection any second and I’d like to not be interrogated while I ogle my girlfriend.”

“Ha. That’s the best time to interrogate you; you’re easily distracted from planning your answers. What else could I be listed as?”

He sighed, put upon but not angry, not really annoyed. “Spouses have a lot of rights, V. They totally trump cousins.”

“Trumping Dick is good,” I said while a voice behind Logan laughed, and another said, “Wow, romantic.”

“So smooth, bro, how could she say no?”

Logan just looked embarrassed, even blushed.

“Man, I thought you had game.”

“Please, noob, the only game he’s got is a uniform.”

“Wow,” I laughed, “it’s almost like I’m there.”

Logan made a sweeping gesture and beside him smiling faces came closer to the camera.

When he got back from duty that time I could tell he was shaky. Something had happened but it wasn’t until later in bed that whatever dam he’d constructed broke.

It had been hours since we’d been clothed, since we’d left the bed and he was kissing down one side of my neck and up the other, taking hits and sips of my lips like he was just making sure they were still where he’d left them. 

Rather than go on, than pull me closer or roll us over he pressed his eyes into my shoulder and breathed. I brought my hands down from his back to squeeze his wrists where they met the hands tangled in my hair.

He stayed there, a growing sense of wetness on my skin and my heart rate picked up.

Later, when he was calmer, he told me that he almost hadn’t made it home. That there had been a malfunction on the flight deck and one of his crew, one of the laughing faces I’d just meet was gone. Alive, but his face and hands had been replaced by scar tissue and years of surgery. 

The military frowns on communicating these things over the possibly intercepted airwaves the crewmen use, especially when the family hasn’t been notified.

“He has a fiancée, Veronica: his high school sweetheart.”

After I finally got him unconscious, I downloaded new paperwork, started filling it out. Researching and making plans.

We were married and had our paperwork processing through the avenues of the Pentagon before his laundry was finished.

It wasn’t a wedding and I didn’t fret over dresses or colors or a theme. It was an insurance policy. Or a dog collar. A “Property of” stamp. I didn’t care as long as it meant I was the first in line to get to him. To know.

We didn’t tell anyone. There weren’t even pictures and I couldn’t pull our witnesses out of a lineup. We did what the Justice of the Peace told us, we kissed, and I didn’t let go of him for a couple of days.

I only felt slightly bad about it when I thought of my father giving me away with some gruff line about it only being symbolic, I’d always be his little girl. There is still time for that. 

Someday when it makes sense, when we want the arguments over venues and guest lists and how many bridesmaids Dick is allowed to hit on, we’ll do it… the wedding part.

People don’t generally ask. We were never a conventional couple. Occasionally there is the, “You guys thinking about marriage?” to which I don’t even have to lie because any thinking we did was fairly minimal.


	21. Lesson #2,548: convertibles are crap for hauling around bail jumpers.

Lesson #2,548: convertibles are crap for hauling around bail jumpers.

Oh, and adult Veronica will catch it from her father like she’s still 16 and could never expect to take down a full grown man looking at 15-20 and she will catch it from Dick in his BFF’s stead and she will not catch it in the most guilting fashion possible from one Logan Echolls. And the entire bond will go towards paying to fix the roof rather than school loans so, all in all, a win.


	22. Lesson #763: bizarre nicknames can be absolutely fantastic but inconvenient things.

The heat on my back felt amazing and had taken me from exhausted but too annoyed at the world to sleep (even with Logan’s fingers carding through my hair) to pliable and relaxed and lapping right at the edge of unconsciousness.

There was a hoot and slash somewhere in the distance along with the rhythmic roll of the waves that pulled me just a little further into awareness. I moaned a bit in protest, arched my back further into the warm sunshine, and turned my nose more deeply into Logan’s solar heated pec...from which a soft rumble was suddenly emanating.

I quirked an eyebrow and considered opening an eye to glare but was too pleasantly weak from the snuggly to really bother.

“You sleep like a cat sometimes, you know that?” 

Which was enough to have me peeking out to make my displeasure clear. “All cute and fluffy and worshipped in some cultures as a god?”

Logan chuckled wiggled his butt into the sand a little deeper. “Nope. More like some ornery old tabby out in the alley knocking over trash cans looking for fish or clues or something.” He kissed my forehead, as if that would soften the blow.

“What, with dirty fur and missing half of one ear?” I huffed, “You clearly never want to get lucky again.”

“No, that’s… I meant…” He sighed. The relaxed sundrenched muscles around me were rigid and moving quickly towards hot, too hot to be snuggled against, the sticky summers past starting to encroach on an otherwise great afternoon. “While you are a brand of adorable, Veronica, you are not some innocent little kitten playing with a ball of yarn. You are not afraid to stalk your prey, to move silently, lighting fast, through dangerous terrain and pounce when the time is right, to swat with serious claws those who have it coming. You’re like one of the big cats in the zoo, penned up but still operating with wild instincts, even when you’re all laid out and purring in the sun like a house cat.”

I was awake by then, curious, confused if he was calling me wild, dangerous, caged, what I wasn’t exactly sure.

“You’re more like a cougar—”

“I know all about you and cougars, thank you very much.”

He blushed, “—or a lynx, or jaguar, a tiger, a lion, a… a bobcat.”

“A bobcat…?” I scoffed

He rolled us over on the sheet that kept the sand from getting into my Java the Hut uniform. “And then there’s the way you like to use my back as a scratching post.” He nudged my head up with his nose, “The way you use your tongue to lick up ice cream, wide and full.” He used his to pull my earlobe into his mouth where he sucked on it and then scrapped it with his teeth. 

I moaned again, only not out of sleepiness at all.

“And let’s not forget the far from domesticated rumbling purr that a double helping of lasagna can bring out of you.” He licked again on my neck and I arched into him, nails digging into his bare shoulders, my shorts picking up moisture from the wetsuit bunched around his hips. “A tame little house cat you are not, Veronica Mars, thank fucking God,” he said panting into my clavicle. 

I socked him in the arm. “You know I have to go back for a night shift in 20 minutes.”

He chuckled, “Sorry there, bobcat, I didn’t mean to wake the beast and leave it hungry.” He bit my chin in a grazing swipe of teeth and I felt my body clench—there was no way I was going to be able to get back to work in time if I didn’t push him off me immediately.

More’s the pity.

***

_Night. You show those bedbugs who is boss, bobcat._

Logan’s text had my body thrumming again, just as it had on the beach, with his arms on either side of me and his mouth on my skin and his voice extolling the virtues of my feral, cat-like tendencies—mostly in the sack—and my mouth went dry and my hearing thick like my ears were just about to pop.

“‘Night, honey,” Dad said and pecked me on my cheek causing me to jerk as I came back from that warm sheet on the beach.

I flushed and stammered; those weren’t really thoughts you wanted to be having with your father around, much less kissing you.

I shot a text off to Logan— _Don’t call me that._ —and made my way to bed hoping I could get a different mental picture going before my dreams kicked in and grossed me out further.


	23. Lesson #2,928: sometimes keeping your mouth shut is actually love.

“Put it away, Veronica.” I narrowed my eyes at him but he wasn’t even looking at me, his hands were in the air like I had a gun on him. “Whatever comment was about to come out of your mouth just… don’t. I can’t right now. It’ll be snarky and we’ll let it drag up old shit and I just don’t have it in me to keep my mouth shut for half a second and then you’ll be pissed and we’ll spend two days not speaking so much as glaring with words and I just don’t have it in me to deal with that right now so… Whatever is on the other side of that face, put it away for two days, I beg you.” And he wasn’t so much begging me as the heavens.

I just stayed where I was, trying to remember what comment had been on the tip of my tongue and how he would have reacted to it if he was tired or crabby or feeling particularly related to Aaron—everybody has bad days around these parts—and figured he was probably right. Rather than trace down why what I was going to say was meaner than usual I looked at Logan’s posture. He was no longer begging God for the serenity to deal with the fucking love of his life (it was a face I’d come to know well) but his hands were braced on the counter, his elbows locked above them; the way his shoulders and head were hanging it looked like that was the only thing keeping him up.

 _Shit._

I crawled up onto the counter next to where he was barely standing and tried to get a look at his face. From what I could tell his eyes were closed and he was actively trying not to breathe or move which all meant cry. 

Usually he either cried like Niagra Falls or like he was the freaking Hoover Dam and not a drop would get past him.

Niagra meant heartbreak, Hoover meant terror. I pulled his arms around me, forcing him to shuffle the few inches down and held on. 

“I was just going to pick a fight with you,” I said a couple minutes later into his chest, “because you leave in less than 48 hours and I’m kind of pissed about it.” I heard him huff a congested laugh. “But, if you tell me what has you so freaked out we can skip straight to the sexy part.”

“Oh, Veronica Mars, you are all sexy parts,” he said, sounding a bit more like himself and I wiggled a little closer.

“Well, then, spill and you can have all my sexy parts on your sexy parts.” He was quiet for too long so I bit his nearest muscle—there were kind of a lot of them.

“Ow, geeze.”

“I know you think I love you too much to taze you, buddy, but you are so wrong. Spill.”

He held me tighter and took a couple of deep breaths. “This case has me scared shitless, Veronica. And I leave in two days and your dad’s still going to be out of town and what if you need serious back-up. I just…”

“Hey,” I pulled his face to mine, able to feel the tremble in his hands on my back. “Hey, I have Weevil and Mac and Wallace and even freaking Dick for back-up if I need.”

“That doesn’t exactly make me feel better.”

“What would make you feel better? A body guard.”

“Nope. You can give those guys the slip like nobody’s business.” The pride in his voice went a long way to defusing the old fight I felt on my tongue. “I know you know what you’re doing and I trust you, I just…. I’m not Willow, Buffy; I don’t know how to raise the dead and I don’t think I could handle it if something happened to you. I barely survived Lilly and my mom and the only reason I didn’t lose it with Carrie was you.”

“Like I would go anywhere. Please. I would haunt you like _whoa_. It’d be _The Ghost and Lieutenant Echolls_. I’d finally get to see what you get up to on that ship when I’m not around.”

His laugh was still too quiet and his arms were still shivery around me.

“I’m trying so hard not to be angry at you. I don’t actually want a normal girlfriend— _God, Veronica_ , do I want you—but sometimes when I think about what could happen to you I wish I did.”

“Which is exactly how I feel about the Navy, buster, so suck it up and tearily wave a flag at me or something.” 

He sighed, “Deal,” and kissed me. 

“Girlfriend,” I said with disdain when he pulled away. “I could have sworn I saw a marriage license somewhere in this kitchen.” 

His laugh sounded more like him than the previous twenty minutes and he kissed me again and started looking for said license in my bra. He never did find it. 


	24. Lesson #2,502: dicks are people too.

In the first grade Dick went from being RJ to Dick 100% because it made him snicker to hear people say the word dick. Nobody who has ever meet him is surprised by this.

Dick hasn’t changed much between that potty-humored, snot-nosed brat and the post-frat, entitled dude that swans about. He still takes way too much pleasure in objectifying those around him and insulting me in particular which seems to be more than enough employment for every brain cell he has.

The first thing he said to me in nine years was so well-timed and gleeful he must have been planning it since Logan told him I’d agreed to fly out days prior. Again, not surprising.

What is surprising is that, in the briefest of flashes, pieces of what I know of psychology and what I know of Dick coalesced for one gut-wrenching moment and I remembered the boy who let his little brother follow him around anywhere, who dragged him to the good parties, and tried to give him friends and cool. I remembered the boy who learned in one fell swoop that his shy baby brother had been molested, killed over a dozen people, and committed suicide. And that was just the beginning of the revelations about Cassidy “Beaver” Casablancas. 

“Chronic depression, you wouldn’t think, huh?”

I wondered what had become of the boy who refused the the best friend who had fought with Cassidy on the roof, heard his voice crack as he asked for a reason to live, and watched him decide not to only to end up at said friend’s door bloody and mumbling, clearly needing help (and become inseparable, even nine years later, from said refused friend). What had it really been like in Dick’s head that summer and fall? How had he continued to remain functional enough to be the bane of half the women on Hearst’s campus? How had those wounds scabbed over and healed since?

“Mmm, I can feel my self worth coming back right now.”

And just like that it was gone and the psychology of Richard Lawrence Casablancas Jr. faded into the douchery of a parade of Hollywood lawyers.


	25. Lesson #2,498: to every friend a Non-Investigative purpose

Mac waited four beats after Wallace had gone into the house for the next round to pick at the steps and mumble, “So, how was it? Seeing him again?”

And the thing about my relationship with Mac is that it is almost completely different from my relationship with Wallace. Wallace waits to figure out the lay of the land, not cautiously but intricately. Like that project he had in electrical engineering eight years ago. Mac will ask the awkward questions. Mac will also answer the awkward questions; rather than bide her time to see what I am going to decide is the new lay of the land.

“Weird.” I remembered walking off that jetway and into the blinding whiteness of his uniform. “Really weird. Is it… wrong that with him standing there in his dress whites and his doofy grin that my ladybits did a little swooping?” Because there was some swooping.

“No, I wouldn’t say the swooping was inherently wrong,” she said in Mac’s mulling tone.

“Yeah, buddy!”

“I think what you do with the swooping could have a lot of consequences.”

I grunted and let my head thunk onto her shoulder. “Why does everyone go right there? I know who I’m sleeping with, thank you.”

“That’s not what I mean. I just… I’ve watched you two for a long time and there were times I was afraid of what the two of you had and times where I was jealous and times where I just couldn’t look away. But you know what I never saw, Veronica?”

I hummed, cozy on her bony shoulder, happy to be having this chat next to her rather than on the far end of a WiFi connection.

“I never saw you look away. Not either of you.”

“He doesn’t look the same, you know.”

“None of us really do. You, maybe—”

“Yes, but he doesn’t look at me the same. He’s not the boy I played emotional chicken with and I’m not that girl.”

“You haven’t been for a long time.” Mac’s voice sounded almost wistful and I raised my head to get a good, live and in person, look at her face.

“It’s fine,” I said, still trying to figure out what she said, what it really meant, “I just need to process it,” when Wallace came back out with beer for me and Mac, a water for himself.

“What’re you guys talking about?”

“Chicken. Processed chicken. Fried chicken! I want fried chicken,” I said, sure that Mac and I had been on a path of conversation which, while paved with good intentions was not one Wallace would travel down without setting off some IEDs.

“Of course you do. Did we just eat?”

“Oh, it’s not enough, Fennel. It’s never enough.”


	26. Lesson #2,523: Snakes are not butterflies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been reading some Trixen; it's kinda angsty.

In my more forgiving and romantic moments I tried to see the frequently horrific events of my youth as a chrysalis. You know, those things that caterpillars go into to become butterflies. 

That’s what I was when Duncan dumped me without a word, when I saw Lily dead beside her swimming pool, when the Fab Four ruled Neptune High far more than any of the senior class. A caterpillar, a soft, fuzzy, adorable, non-threatening caterpillar.

The next four years would change that, change me and at the end of it I would limp out of Neptune a fledgling butterfly, wings still too wet to fly but bound for brilliant colors, sweet sips from gorgeous flowers, and dizzying trips through blue skies. From my becoming onwards I would be a new woman, a better woman, a better daughter, a better friend. It wasn’t exactly going to be hard to be a better girlfriend.

Only that turned out not to be true. Because if I had truly become a butterfly I would have left Neptune after helping Logan get a lawyer and returned to New York and been the woman Piz had convinced his parents I was.

I am not a butterfly. I’m not even a stunted chrysalis with a caterpillar trapped inside. No.

I am a snake. 

See, snakes start out tiny and practically harmless, especially against larger animals. But they shed their skin because they have grown, the have learned from all the things that have happened and gotten stronger, tougher, better, more and so their skin doesn’t fit and they burst out of it, leaving it like a ghost in their wake. 

Sometimes it peels away easily leaving their new outer layer bright and smooth and sometimes they rub up against rocks for hours trying to clear the cloudy, suffocating straitjacket from their eyes. And that was me, all those years in Neptune, beating myself against rocks, trying to rip away the old, too-tight flesh, leaving a trail of ghosts in my wake. Over and over again.

I’d shed skin so quickly back then, been growing and changing at such a rate it wasn’t any wonder that at times my loved ones weren’t sure they even recognized me any more. I barely recognized myself.

Then I left and my rate of growth atrophied, plummeted, slowed, whatever, enough so that I had been living with dead old skin shuttering the truth from my sight to the point where I didn’t even notice. And finally, under just enough pressure, it cracked and ripped away and there I was bigger and freer and stronger than I had ever been. Maybe, finally, big enough and strong enough, fast enough to take down the big dogs.

And if I wasn’t, this was Neptune and I would be soon.

...Furthermore, Logan makes a way hotter butterfly than I do, just saying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am considering posting some bits that I have written and am discarding as not in tone with this series. Some of them are really short and some of them are thousands of words. I bring this up because they are in stages of disrepair and I would consider adding a "story" to this as a series to house them for enjoyment of others/removal from my plot bunny paddock. Thoughts? Do it? Don't? Do, but differently?


	27. Lesson#1,174: a good friend is hard to find

I’d never been very good at making friends. Sweet, cute Veronica’s last new friend had kissed Logan and gotten cut out of the group in a matter of days. Vengeful, angry Veronica only made friends by blackmailing people and discovering she didn’t hate them. 

Stanford Veronica doesn’t really have friends. I tried to revert back to sweet, cute Veronica—not like anybody here would know the difference or ask me to solve some violent crime—but she just wasn’t real any more. And the anger wasn’t either. Sure, if I think about it I am angry at Vinny and Jake Kane and my mom and Logan and even Piz sometimes, but that isn’t my default setting anymore. I don’t wake up glaring and go through my day just braced for a fight.

I loan people highlighters or paper when asked, I try to smile invitingly to table neighbors in the dining hall or the library. I never really get past a witty opener—and I am damn good at witty openers. My roommate is not a source of friend-makingness since she almost doesn’t exist in my realm, but instead essentially lives with her boyfriend somewhere on the opposite end of campus.

I’m not really comfortable sitting alone at a bar unless I was on a mission (I do crack occasionally and send myself out on one) so I spend a lot of nights studying or working or watching reruns on TV.

The exception seems to be guys hitting on me. Inviting me to parties or asking me to study with them as a veiled attempt to get to know me in the biblical sense which makes me miss being in a well-known relationship significantly. 

On the upside, those moments let me practice my self-defense.


	28. Lesson #2,501: Helen Fisher* is one smart—possibly psychic—broad (or you are in several drives with Logan Echolls).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *Helen Fisher is an anthropologist whose studies of love in the brain have changed the way we understand the phenomenon. Her TED Talk (http://www.ted.com/talks/helen_fisher_tells_us_why_we_love_cheat?language=en#t-1051812) outlines the three drives—lust, romance, and attachment—and how they can operate concurrently or towards different objects at the same time.

Propped against that slick car in jeans and a long sleeve shirt, he looked like he had a thousand times before in parking lots all over this God forsaken city. He looked at me like he had when we were 15, or 16 and 17 and starting to make our way toward frienimies; like we were 16, 17, 18 (pick an age!) and struggling to make _us_ work. The confidence and thrill in his voice, his eyes, the mockery in his smirk set more than just my ladyparts rumbling but my heart as well. The thud-swell I had felt as a girl was just as strong, reverberated just as loudly through my frame.

Part of me felt horrified that it could still happen, guilty that I could feel that way for someone while I was with Piz, and annoyed that I hadn’t seen it coming.

Logically, and as a scientist—hello there, psychology degree—I knew there was a difference between the part of my brain that lusted after Logan, dress whites beaming in the setting sun, and the part that felt warm and contented knowing I would be going home to Piz. Even this new—old—romantic slide was a completely different drive in the human mind. But the first difference was one I was much more comfortable with. 

Saying Logan was attractive was almost academic, acknowledging that I felt some attraction as well was simply admitting I had a pulse and was a heterosexual cis gendered female. My relationship with Piz was under no fire from mere facts.

Even the love I bore for him as a lifelong friend and someone I depended on for years of my life (whether romantically or otherwise) was about the past and Piz and I, we were the present. I was not shaken, not worried by that.

However, to look at him and not feel a tingle of desire but a cascade of tenderness rooted solidly in the now rather than the then? Sweep that under some sarcasm and hope it goes away. Stuff it so far down that by the time it resurfaces you are back in New York with the boyfriend you have loved for a year, the boyfriend you have been thinking of getting a dog with. And for godsake, don’t let it happen again!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Really, take 25 minutes and go watch the TedxTalk. It's interesting stuff and explains a lot of the stuff I never thought was real in soap operas.


	29. Lesson #1,189: sex is not a magic bullet (full disclosure: I do not intend to say that sex is not a personalized blender one may order online or through an infomercial, though that is also true).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is a much longer version of this lesson in _Lessons Not Quite Learned_ that I just couldn't make work for various reasons and am still struggling with but I need to get it out of my sight for a while and make some peace with it. So, go read it if thou desirest.

Growing up in the sunshine riddled underbelly of the movie industry you see sex used as a weapon nearly constantly. Don't believe me, take a scroll through some of the most popular American TV shows. Give _Desperate Housewives_ a looksee. Acceptance and even expectation of women to use wiles (AKA their hot bods) to achieve their ends will be prolific. Perhaps it’s true everywhere, I don't know. I can only tell you it was very true among the glittering wives and girlfriends of Neptune, California.

It passed on to the next generation almost seamlessly. Lilly was the proud valkyrie of her sexuality and if she had lived I would have been more like her than not. As it was I learned to use that particular wiley weapon in the pursuit of truth—especially truth I was paid to unearth.

I was fully aware that I was using my pretty face and pert body to get information (sorry, Leo, not sorry) But I thought that was where I drew the line. I may have batted my eyes at a boyfriend or two but usually as a joke or to distract them while I stole food.

But it wasn't that. It was just that mine looked different than Lilly's, different than the coy and conniving expressions on television women. 

It was this idea that sex, that making love, had some magical properties. What exactly I thought those properties were, I'm not sure.

It wasn't even like I had a whole lot of evidence to support this general, almost subconscious, idea. I mean, Lilly's idea of magical sex was not having to get up to go the bathroom right after (UTIs are bad; pee as soon as you can walk again). Shortly after our weekly sessions of her telling me how awesome and gross sex was came to an abrupt halt I was raped. Top that off with the way I watched friends, classmates, parents, clients, what have you, treat sexual partners like Pokemon cards... it's easy to see that maybe I should have been as disenchanted with any possible extraordinary aspects of sex as I was with idea of fidelity in the general populace.

Nevertheless, I truly believed that Duncan and I were cemented once we began sleeping together (even in the face of Logan's flagrant sex-buddyism). With Logan I thought because it was he and I ( _we, us,_ ) the sex that was between us was somehow special, untouchable. But then Madison Sinclair struck again, and again, and again. I could not really wrap my mind around how he could have sex with her and not have had some emotional involvement, some kind of magic.

She wasn't a stranger, a celebrity collector, a peripheral, neutral entity we'd known before. It was Madison Sinclair. She'd dated Dick, she tried to steal every boyfriend I'd ever had. We _knew_ her, we'd been to her birthday parties, we'd played spin the bottle with her. We knew things about her paternity she didn't even know. So, how could it possibly be just sex between them?

And I never really dealt with that. I just walked away from Logan and the violation of my "Sex is special" ideals. 

I got so wrapped up in the sex dichotomy (it's either good because you love the person or awful because you're being assaulted) that it took a therapist to point it out in college (a degree that requires you to get therapy, crazy right?). Logically, it makes a lot of sense. My student-of-psychology brain found it intriguing and I set myself the asinine homework assignment of having a one night stand.

Worst idea ever.


	30. Lesson #2,514: A trust broken must be re-earned (also see Lesson #731: Love does not equal trust).

He was being weird. How exactly I couldn’t quite pin. I’d been gone and I knew it was one of those Dick All Day days that I’d never been a fan of as in the days of yore it meant hyper, drunk Logan or broody, drunk Logan occasionally paired with drunk Dick who isn’t terribly different from sober Dick (if such a thing existed) if you overlooked the increase in the puking quotient. 

I’d thrown together food of Logan’s usual variety rather than mine and barely gotten him to unscrunch his furrowed brow. Even putting my feet playfully into his lap while he poked at his food barely earned a distracted fondle. 

“Okay, buster, what’s her name and how many knees do I have to de-cap?” He just looked at me like I’d actually accused him of something and pushed my feet out of his lap before looking away.

Chalk up another reason to hate Dick Casablancas.

“Nope, sir, I’m sorry that was the wrong answer and the penalty is,” I checked my wrist like there was some magic prize telling watch on it, “100 sit-ups.” I had visions of me sitting on his knees catching a kiss for each one, but he wasn’t even really looking at me.

I had no cute and no snark for the look on his face. My go to in moments like this in ye olden days was to either ignore it or pick a fight. Years of schooling and therapy told me that both of those things would be the wrong call here, but my body was already pulling me towards the door.

“Logan…” I breathed. “What the fuck happened with Dick?”

He didn’t answer me, not in any way the logical mind could follow—not that we were ever logical. “We don’t… _end_ well.”

“Pshhht,” was the instant response I didn’t even think about.

“Ever. Never have we ended well.”

“Never have we ended,” I bit out, gripping hard on my cool and gut level reaction, hoping it panned out better than the last one.

“Nine years, Veronica.” And he was looking at point blank range into my eyes, half scaring the shit out of me.

“And one phone call. Nine years and one phone call.” I said it as clearly and cleanly into his eyes as I could manage and with all the conviction left in me after a couple of hours of his angst act. “I say again, _pshhht_.”

“Nine years and one phone call.”

“Yup,” I popped. “Now, play your sit-up cards right and maybe you’ll get a really nice phone call later.”

The first smile to meet his eyes since the sun came up and it was on, I was sliding into his lap and he was kissing me and noone was thinking about food. Well, he wasn’t because dinner still smelled amazing.


End file.
